


Aftermath

by WanderingAlice



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, F/M, Gen, M/M, Ouch, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:35:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingAlice/pseuds/WanderingAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier doesn't have a past, and he doesn't have a future. Steve, Steven Rogers, not Captain America, isn't sure if he has a future either. He does have a past though, and he remembers.</p>
<p>Just a bit of state-of-mind stuff as everyone recovers from the events of The Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> The feels made me do it. Seriously, I haven't been able to write ANYTHING for a few months now, and then the feels from this movie kicked the writer's block out of my brain. This is a little shaky, since I haven't written in a while, but it needed to be done, because the plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone. There may or may not be another story bouncing off of this, if my luck holds and the writer's block doesn't return. (For those of you reading David, a new chapter will be up very soon, I promise! Sorry I fail so badly!)
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

The Winter Soldier doesn’t have a past, and he doesn’t have a future. All he has is the mission, and even that never lasts. It’s wiped away with bursts of electricity to his brain, mind wiped clean, a blank slate waiting for the next mission. He’s a tool to be used, and stored away in a freezer when it’s not needed. He’s a twisted creature of metal and science. A HYDRA experiment. He only knows how to follow orders, and now, he’s following the most basic ones- go to ground, find the nearest safe house, and wait for someone to come find him. He doesn’t know why he saved the last target, why he went against the mission. He doesn’t remember Bucky Barnes. He doesn’t remember Captain America. He especially doesn’t remember Steve Rogers. It hurts too much.

 

Steve, Steven Rogers, _not_ Captain America, isn’t sure if he has a future either. He does have a past though, and he remembers. He remembers being the little guy from Brooklyn, and he remembers his best friend. He remembers days, months, years spent at Bucky’s side, always a little in his shadow, following his friend. He remembers the day Bucky signed up for the war. And the day he got his orders, leaving Steve behind. He remembers the procedure that made him Captain America- and wondering, that night, when he looked at himself in the mirror, if Bucky would even recognize him. He remembers the horror of learning that Bucky was lost, killed or taken prisoner by HYDRA. He remembers the relief of finding him- not well, but at least alive. The feelings he had to push down, to re-focus, to forget, because they were best friends, not… _that_ (no matter how much he wanted to be). He remembers Bucky, gloriously alive, following him into battle, believing in him even when others said it was a suicide mission, or that it _couldn’t_ be done. He remembers two years hunting for HYDRA with Bucky at his side, their positions reversed now- Bucky following Steve. He remembers laughter, jokes, missions, Bucky sitting beside him at the campfire telling embarrassing stories.

He remembers the day Bucky fell with surprising clarity. The expression on his face was etched into Steve’s heart, his last scream echoing in Steve’s nightmares. Those nightmares didn’t come so frequently anymore, or at least, they hadn’t- maybe once a week at most- until he encountered the Winter Soldier. Until he saw those familiar dark eyes. Now, Steve sees him fall every night. Sometimes he’s got two flesh-and-blood arms, sometimes one is metal. Sometimes he’s falling from a train over the frozen snow, sometimes from a crashing SHIELD carrier. Sometimes it’s even Steve that falls. But in all of them, his eyes lock with Steve’s right before he falls, and Steve _knows_ he can’t save him, he knows, and he knows that Bucky knows, and it’s tearing him apart. Every time he wakes, there are tears on his face. Sam doesn’t seem to notice, or he has the grace not to say anything if he does. Steve is grateful. He won’t stop looking, not ever. Because no matter what anyone says, he _will_ find Bucky, and he _will_ bring him home.

 

The Black Widow doesn’t want to remember, but she can’t seem to stop. The bullet. The hospital. The training. The Winter Soldier, teaching her how to kill like it’s an art, to create a cover, to spy, to be everything to everyone and at the same time nothing at all. She never once asked him who he was, before he was the Soldier. She regrets that now, thinks that maybe she could have saved Steve some pain if only she’d tried harder to get to know the Winter Soldier instead of taking all he could give her and hating him every minute of it. Natasha gets nightmares too, and sometimes they’re about Steve and the Soldier. She sees Steve dead, broken, insane, any number of horrors inflicted on him by the man with his best friend’s face. She sees Steve kill the Soldier, and watches him fall to pieces before her eyes. She sees the Soldier kill Steve as he refuses to fight back.

More often though, they’re about Clint. Because she sees what it’s doing to Steve, even though he tries to hide it, and she’s smart enough to realize that that could very nearly be her and Clint, if they hadn’t been able to get him away from Loki. So most of her nightmares play the same sad story over and over again, but this time it’s not Steve who’s attacked by his long-lost friend, its Nat, and Clint looks at her and asks her “Who the hell is Clint?” It’s after a particularly bad dream- where Clint tortured her in the helicarrier before killing her- that she understands. So she does what she has to do to get her head on straight, she goes to establish a new cover, and she takes Clint with her. After, when she’s okay again, she’ll take Clint to go help Steve find Bucky. She has a feeling that Bucky Barnes and Clint Barton have a need of each other.

 

Sam sees. Sam watches, and Sam knows. He knows that Steve has nightmares, that he hasn’t slept a full night since meeting the Winter Soldier. Sam knows the Black Widow hurts for Steve, and for herself. That’s why she leaves. Sam knows she’ll come back when she can. He knows that Steve is driven to find Bucky, and it’s tearing him apart that he didn’t know what had happened. He knows that Steve did try to find Bucky, at least to bring his body home. But all Steve found were dog-tags, tags that he still wears around his neck, next to his own. (Sam knows that no one else knows about the tags, except maybe Natasha. He keeps Steve’s secret.) He knows that the Soldier might not be able to return to being Bucky, and knows that if that happens, it will kill Steve. Not physically, no. Captain America would remain, but the man, Steve Rogers, would be dead, frozen and shattered into pieces. He knows that even if they can bring Bucky back, it will be a long hard road- he’s counseled hundreds of soldiers at the VA, he knows how hard it will be. But Sam also knows that no matter how hard that road is, Steve will walk it. And he knows that he’ll be right by Steve’s side the whole way, because Steve is like the brother he never had.

He knows Steve needs him, needs someone around to keep him grounded, to remind him just who Steve Rogers is. He needs Sam to be his new Howling Commandos. He needs him, because no-one else is around to keep him from losing himself in the chase, sinking into his duty (never mind that it’s a self-given order for once), and forgetting to be Steve when it’s so much easier to be Captain America, and forget how much he hurts. Sam knows that Captain America, the hero and super-soldier, and Steve Rogers are both the same man and different people. Captain America is American patriotism made flesh, a divine ideal far above the reach of regular men. Steve Rogers is just a man- a stubborn man who doesn’t know the concept of fear, but a man all the same. And men have needs that divine ideals don’t. Sam also knows that the Winter Soldier is two things as well, the brainwashed soviet and the man named Bucky. He doesn’t know which one is stronger, or if Bucky is even alive inside the Soldier. He doesn’t know what will happen when they find him, or how they’ll bring him back. But Sam does know, without Steve ever telling him, that Steve loves Bucky with every fiber of his being. And he thinks he knows that if Bucky is alive in there, it’s because he loves Steve just as much.

 

Somewhere inside the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barns is alive. And he remembers Steve. He remembers years of protecting Steve, from the first time (five years old in the old sandlot, the little boy didn’t seem to understand that the boys who were beating the puppy were bigger than him, so Bucky stepped in and that was that) to the last time (Steve in the back alley, getting the shit beat out of him, Bucky in his new uniform, orders in hand.) He remembers being relieved that Steve was being rejected from the military- his friend would be killed in seconds on the battle field- but never telling him that. He remembers wishing they could trade bodies, Steve’s spirit seemed built to fill a stronger form, not trapped in body that kept him in the hospital for weeks at a time. Bucky would have given anything to see Steve strong and whole, never having to get another injection, never having to worry if this activity or that one would send him into a fit, never having to fear that this time he might not get better. He remembers the letters that told him Steve had found a way to join the army at that fair, the way his heart had dropped down to the floor and the fear had started to eat away at him. Bucky remembers being captured and experimented on by HYDRA, and the only thing that kept him from giving in was thinking that if he didn’t get back, Steve was going to get killed. He remembers waking up, repeating his name and number, to see a familiar face above him- a familiar face with a new, stronger body. He remembers Steve showing him how he had changed, and why. He remembers fighting beside Steve, with him for every step of the way, only this time, it was Steve who protected Bucky. He remembers falling. He doesn’t remember anything after that. Those memories belong to the Winter Soldier.

Bucky has nightmares, too. Trapped inside his own head, screaming as his body kills Steve. He sees Steve’s face when the mask came off, recognition swiftly turning to disbelief, and then despair. He sees Steve’s face the next time they meet, so sad, so impossibly sad, and it kills him to know that expression was his fault. His fault, when he’d promised (twenty/ninety years ago) to never let anybody hurt Steve ever again. He sees Steve’s eyes when he closes his own, hears Steve’s voice telling him “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” feels Steve’s body wrapped around his own, fighting for his life and the lives of untold others. He feels his metal finger pull the trigger on the gun, sees Steve fall with a bullet in his gut. These are his nightmares, but they are the Winter Soldier’s memories.

He knows he’s getting better. That every day the Winter Soldier is dying more, and Bucky is closer to being alive. He knows that Steve will forgive him, had already forgiven him before the bullet left the barrel of the gun. He knows that Steve is looking for him, with the man who wore the metal wings. He knows that Steve will never give up, that as long as there’s a shred of Bucky left within the Winter Soldier, Steve will make sure he lives and the Soldier dies. Bucky understands that Captain America is the Soldier’s mission, but he also knows that he won’t ever go through with it, because he knows that he loves Steve- has since they were kids. Maybe he never said, (neither one of them could speak the words, but when did they ever need to say it?) but one day, when he’s okay again, he will. And he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he will be okay again. Because he knows Steve. Steve is Captain America, but he’s also that little guy from Brooklyn, and he and Bucky are together, until the end of the line.


End file.
